Bedridden patients are normally maintained in hospital beds which have one or more open frame crib sides mounted on both sides of the bed, to the outside of the horizontal bed frame rail upon which the mattress rests, and which crib sides are vertically slidable for shifting from a detent maintained raised position with the upper ends of the crib sides well above the mattress to a gravity lowered position where the top of the crib sides are below the mattress.
The crib sides are mounted in pairs on both sides of the bed with one pair at the head of the bed frame and the other at the foot. Each of the four crib sides therefore are independent of the other three. The purpose of the crib sides when in the raised position is two fold; to prevent the patient from falling out of the bed and to deter a person from voluntarily leaving the bed. With the crib sides in the lowered position they neither hinder the patient in getting in or out of the bed nor do they impede the hospital personnel from attending the patient in bed.
Typically, each crib side is of open frame, tubular construction being generally of modified oval shape defined by a peripheral frame member joined by a plurality of horizontally spaced, vertical risers or rails. Further, typically a mounting bracket member is rigidly attached to the outside bed frame or rail, often by means of a clamping screw which has a threaded shank passing through the bracket base member, bearing against the vertical bed frame rail and compressing the rail against a bracket backing member which abuts the opposite face of the vertical bed frame rail. The mounting bracket at its end typically includes outwardly projecting bushings having vertical bores sized slightly larger than the diameter of the hollow metal tubular vertical rails of the crib side. Thus, the vertical axis bushings permit the crib side to be raised and lowered by sliding the tubular crib side vertical rails up and down within respective bores center of the bushings of the mounting bracket. Projecting radially outwardly of the vertical hollow tubular rail near the lower end of the crib side are respective spring biased detent buttons which underly the bushings to prevent the crib side rails from moving downwardly under the weight of the crib side.
In the past, it was necessary for the nurse or other hospital attendant to use both hands to simultaneously depress both detent buttons to force them interiorly of the hollow vertical rails of the crib side so that the crib side vertical rails would be free to move downwardly through the bores of the mounting bracket bushings.
Thus, in order to drop the crib side when it is in raised position, the detents on either side of the inner rails near the bottom of the crib side must be released simultaneously. Because both hands are used to release the detents, it is often difficult to control the speed by which the crib side drops and pinched fingers often result. Additionally, it may be necessary to use one hand to restrain the patient or, the nurse or other attendant may have medication or the like in one hand. This requires the nurse to set down the medication and use both hands to release the detents to cause the crib side to drop and then retrieve the medication or the like.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a detent release bar or trip bar which may be integrated to a crib side in its manufacture or as a separate attachment for placement on an existing crib side, which, facilitates the manual release of the detent buttons by causing depression of dual detent buttons simultaneously on the pair of crib side inner rails, which can be operated by one hand, which is of low cost, and which may be readily grasped by the attendant to effect release and drop of the crib side.